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Upgrading the label

I was at one of the Rosenblum Cellars tasting rooms a few weeks ago and was impressed to see that each of their bottles had a small tear off ticket on the back of the label. They call this " Wine Find " and it's basically a postage stamp sized perforated section with the wines specs - very useful if you decide you liked the wine and want to be able to find it again.

From Michael Kohne, Rosenblum's Director of Marketing:

“Wine find is a tear-off portion of a wine’s back label that allows consumers to tangibly hold the wine’s exact information. This perforated portion is a particular feature that benefits a winery like Rosenblum where there are multiple bottlings of the same grape but use different vineyards, blends or proprietary names. Take for example Zinfandel where Rosenblum makes 20-some-odd bottlings, the winery was at a certain point receiving calls from all over the country inquiring about somehow acquiring (whether buying direct or through a local retailer) a certain wine which consumer had had at a restaurant. Of course only remembering that it was a Zinfandel our service department was not able to pinpoint the exact wine the costumer was searching for. Now, with the ‘wine find’ feature the winery is better ensured (on a retail level) to give the consumer better service by making sure they acquire (or get information on) the exact wine they’re inquiring about.”

I haven't seen many other developments in this industry that are so simple and cheap to implement, yet have such utility. I for one have great difficulty remembering what wine's I've drunk unless I take the time to write some notes down.

Replies

Blog comment by Stephen, May 15, 2007.

Is it stuck to the bottle other than by the perforation? If so, how do you tear it off? If not, how do you prevent it from tearing off before it reaches the customer?

Blog comment by Betsey, May 15, 2007.

I think this is a fantastic idea - I always have trouble trying to remember the wines that I've had, and removing the wine find sounds much easier than finding a pen and paper. I hope more wineries add this to their label soon.

Blog comment by Patrick Schaber, May 15, 2007.

Thanks so much for the mention! Rosenblum was great about doing the interview. I wish more wines would do the labels!

Great strategy! Other food industries have been including savable information on the labels forever. I'm specifically thinking about the recipes on the insides of canned ingredients, like broth or canned-corn, that of course remind you which brand to buy next time. I'm kind of surprised that the wine industry hasn't done this before. The only thing I could think to improve on it is to include some blank lines on the back for "My Notes" and perhaps a rating scheme from 1 to 5 (where the user fills in ovals with a pen).

Blog comment by Snooth Blog extended labelI, Oct 9, 2007.

[...] about wine itself. I’ve written about advances in labeling technology on several occasions - here and here. Continuing the theme, Cline Cellars is introducing an ‘extended text’ label, [...]